Diary of a Mad County

Wednesday, April 7.Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin sees a photo of Traditional Values Coalition boss Reverend Lou Sheldon at a White House ceremony at which President Bushsigned a partial-birth ban. The image sends Breslin down memory lane, recalling the first time he met Sheldon, at the Republican convention in 1992, and asked Sheldon why he's obsessed with gays. "They proselytize," Sheldon reportedly told him. "They come to the door and take your son. They turn him into a homosexual." Sheldon denies the conversation ever happened. "I have never met Jimmy Breslin, never had the conversation described in his column today and never said those sentences to anyone in my life," Sheldon claims. We believe Sheldon, and not just because he's a resident of Anaheim and, therefore, a homeboy. See, the Sheldon depicted in Breslin's column isn't nearly as graphic in his descriptions of gay sex acts as the man we've come to know as the Reverend Lou, who braces us with hot, hot stories about necrophilia, urophilia, klismaphilia (sexual pleasure from enemas) and coprophagia (sexual gratification from eating feces).

South Park (the cartoon starring construction paper) riffs on You Got Served(the movie starring Steve Harvey, in a role assigned by Satan, and OC dancer Lamont Decarlo "Tails" Goodeas a guy who can mop the parquet with his own head) to show America what Orange County is really all about. It's not the sex and money—and sexy money—of The O.C. Not the New Age- and reefer-fueled madness of Orange County the movie. Not the Woody Allen-meets-Don Bren neurosis of Arrested Development. It's our multi-ethnic dance crews, which are, as you know, at war with one another and settling their differences like real men in West Side Story. These guys dance better on their hands than you do on your feet. On South Park, the kids from Orange County are urban, hip-hoppin' members of a breakdance crew that serves the kids of a small Colorado mountain town—and then dies. On the very day that the Reverend Lou denies he knows Breslin—three times—South Park's episode is titled "You Got F'd In the A." Coincidence?

Thursday, April 8.ˇPlei bol! The free-agency reconquista of your Anaheim Angels over the winter is already paying dividends as the Halos rally from a 1-0 deficit with one out in the ninth to beat the Seattle Mariners 5-1. The victory against former Angels reliever Shigetoshi Hasegawa—he got served!—completes a three-game sweep for the boys in rojo, fueled mostly by the indefatigable guns of Bartolo Colón (whose fastball kept hitting 98 mph into the sixth inning of his opening-day victory) and Kelvim Escobar, as well as the Ruthian bats of Vladimir Guerreroand José Guillen, who smacked key hits during the series. But the most impressive Latino wasn't a multimillion-dollar addition, but rather career backup José Molina, brother of the Serafines' Gold Glove-winning catcher Benjie. Most Angels observers thought the club would release José before spring training because of his anemic .184 batting average last season. But with big hermano Benjie nursing sore hamstrings, José stepped up—er, crouched down—and ably took his brother's spot, masterfully handling the Angels staff and scoring five runs during the series to lead the team. With Benjie scheduled to return soon, go check out the biggest sibling rivalry since Cain and Abel this weekend at Anaheim "We're No Longer Named After a Power Company Accused of Ripping Off the Public" Stadium.

Friday, April 9. An anonymous Weekly reader reports that her preschool got served rodent: "Our receptionist was on the phone this morning when a woman came into the school carrying a gerbil cage, a bag of gerbil food, a bag of wood shavings and a gerbil in a gerbil ball. She dumped everything on the reception desk. The receptionist was preoccupied and only heard the woman say, 'This is for Carol.' She left the office, climbed in her car and burned rubber out of the parking lot. That was when our receptionist realized we don't have a Carol." The search for a Carol among the school's many parents proved fruitless. The preschool has not yet called the Gerbil Hot Line at the Traditional Values Coalition, (714) 520-0300.

Saturday, April 10. Waiting at Los Alamitos Army Airfield for a flight carrying 55 reservists from Iraq today, Los Angeles Times staffer Daniel Yi documents just how confused our soldiers are about Why We Fight. The spouse of one soldier told Yi, "We must keep fighting until the terrorists are gone. Absolutely." Apparently, the terrorists are already gone. Another spouse told Yi, "The only disappointment is that we didn't find any [weapons of mass destruction]. Even if we had found some terrorist camps, that would have been nice." Mission accomplished!

Sunday, April 11.Jesus emerges from a hole in the ground, sees his shadow and announces three more weeks of winter.

Monday, April 12.The Orange County Register profiles strip-club magnate Bill Gammoh today following a Los Angeles TimesSunday piece on the 39-year-old Jordanian immigrant. Both papers report that Gammoh—who recently won a $2 million settlement against the city of Anaheim for profits lost because city officials took nearly eight years to issue a business permit for his Taboo Gentlemen's Club—plans to use the windfall to launch four lawsuits against his real nemesis, the city of La Habra [see Burnie Thompson's "The Making of a Free Speech Activist," Feb. 1, 2001]. As if to coordinate their ads with their copy, the Times runs an ad featuring a be-thonged woman prominently displaying her great ass for the city of Las Vegas, while the Reg's online edition of its Gammoh story flashes a New York, New York plug with a woman sitting on a blackjack table, her ample breasts spilling from her dress, dice tastefully blocking viewers from a peek at her genitalia. Unless of course that's a piercing.